


The Could Have Beens

by jumpitorloseit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 03:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17758883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpitorloseit/pseuds/jumpitorloseit
Summary: He could tell her. Prove he was innocent. But then what? It had been twelve years. Sirius's life in Azkaban had prevented him from moving on. But Edora? She had grown up. She was allowed to live a full beautiful life, and Sirius had been stuck on pause.A story of Hogwarts sweethearts and a future that wasn't theirs.





	The Could Have Beens

_Sirius_

Sirius stared at the woman on the bench in front of him. He was in dog form, obviously, even in muggle London, he kept to his disguise. He was a wanted man everywhere.

But his dog form wasn’t even foolproof. There were a handful of people he wouldn’t be able to hide from and one was sitting on this bench reading a lengthy looking muggle novel. The moment he had seen her he had bounded into bushes nearby.

He reasoned that there were probably a lot of black dogs in the world. But something told him, she would know who he was. She was uncanningly cluey, that Edora Powell.

Of course, he had known the moment they had met that Powell would be the end of him. And here he was, hiding in the bushes, well aware he was just one well aimed curse away from Azkaban again. She wouldn’t be afraid to fight him. She hadn’t joined the Order publicly during the war, but she had done her part against Voldemort in other, equally dangerous ways, despite Sirius’s warnings to stay out of it.

She had changed less than he had, unweathered by years in Azkaban. Her hair wasn’t gray, but it was a bit mousier. He hadn’t thought about her in a long time. Back in Azkaban he would _occasionally_ let his brain wander to Edora and her soft, soft skin and sweet kisses and a ridiculous loud laugh and for the briefest moment the dementor’s wouldn’t seem so dark, so depressing, so dangerous. He’d think about the moments with her that he had been the happiest. Moments with this pretty girl with almond eyes and a dry wit unmatched by just about anyone he had ever known. The moment he had proposed to her, when she had moved in, the first time he asked her out, their first kiss.

But then he would think about that day. They had decided to elope. They decided James and Lily and her sister, Poppy, would be witnesses and little Harry would come too, of course. He had snuck a peek at her in the pretty white sun dress that she had picked out for their wedding. She had left for the weekend, apparated to her sisters to tell her they were going to marry in the following week and ask her to attend. It was while she gone that James and Lily had been murdered and Sirius framed. He had no time to tell her what had really happened, to tell her he loved her. He had been marched off to Azkaban without saying goodbye.

He knew what it looked like, sounded like. He would think about how the love of his life must _hate_ him and the dementors would swoop in and he’d almost let himself be kissed. After awhile, he learned to never let himself think about her.

But here she was. The usual fierceness and snark not on her face. It always disappeared when she was reading. He wondered if she had been afraid when the newspapers stated he was free. Did she think that the evil Sirius Black they depicted would hurt her? Did he break her heart twelve years ago?

He sniffed at the air. She didn’t wear the same perfume anymore. Just as well, he didn’t think his heart would be able handle that smell. Too familiar, too warm, too full of memories he wouldn’t let himself relive.

He looked at her hands. She wasn’t wearing a ring. Was she divorced? Married? Widowed? Had she moved on? Did she have a boyfriend? Kids?

He had decided that he wouldn’t look into her life until _after_ he had cleared his name. But here she was in front of him. He had the newspaper. He always carried it, rolled up, clamped between his teeth like a bone. He could show her Peter, _prove_ he was innocent.

Then what? What if she had just lost her ring and her husband was waiting for her at home? What if she was happily married? And if she wasn’t, so what? He was still a wanted fugitive. He couldn’t bring her into that. Plus she was in her thirties now, an adult. They had been so so so in love twelve years ago, the likes of which he never thought he would be lucky enough to experience, but merlin, they had been kids. It had been _twelve years_.

Sirius had had dementors floating around his head day in and day out, preventing him from moving on. But Edora? She had grown up, moved on. She was allowed to mourn and celebrate and live a full beautiful life.

And here Sirius was, crouching in the bushes, watching her.

On the other hand, didn’t she deserve an explanation? They had been engaged and then he had been _arrested for murder._ She must have been so lost and confused. Thinking she had never really known him at all.

But she _had_ known him; known him better than anyone; loved him more than anyone. Sirius hadn’t known very much love in his life. He had James and Remus and he had _her._ How lucky he had been to have known her love.

Without realizing he was doing it, he had stepped out. It was warmer away from the shade of the bushes and the sun’s rays hit his black coat, it’s usual sheen dirty from years in Azkaban and weeks of being on the run.

Her eyes were still on her book. It took a lot to distract Edie when she was reading. He felt his heart beating against his chest. She was still _so_ beautiful. Was he really about to risk his freedom? Was it foolhardy? Was it selfish?

As if sensing him, she looked up. Her face whitened instantly and her hands flew to her a pocket inside her jacket, likely grabbing her wand.

“Black, you better turn around and run right now. I have my wand and I am not afraid to hurl every hex I know at you. Park full of muggles be damned.”

The use of his last name hit him in the chest and his already fading confidence faltered further. He wanted, no _needed_ to communicate that he had not done what she had thought he had done. He realized that part of him, a small part, had hoped that she had not believed it. That she had sat at home with unwavering faith in him for twelve years. “ _Naivety is not attractive on you, Black,”_ he thought bitterly.

He set the newspaper down. The rat perched on the Weasley boy’s shoulders circled in dark ink. He nudged it forward with his nose and stepped back a foot or two. Her eyebrows furrowed and eyes narrowed, clearly trying to decipher both what he might be communicating and what he could be plotting. _“Trust me,”_ he thought desperately. It came out as a low whine.

She ran forward and grabbed the paper, one hand still inside her jacket. She stared at the front article and her eyes widened. She looked up. “I’m apparating home. I live at Number Eighteen Sleeping Way in Hogsmeade. There are several wards set around my house but I have a screen door in the back. Meet me there. I will be inside my house, you will be outside and we can talk through the screen. No one can see into my backyard.”

She turned and apparated and Sirius did the same.

He sat by her screen door in the back and waited. The shield charms and wards were placed at about a foot from the door. He could not get past it.

She appeared by the door and sat down, her hand still clutched tightly around her wand. He was impressed with her home defense and this idea, this way they can have a conversation, but she was safe behind these wards. Although, if he had been genuinely dangerous, letting him know where she lived was probably not wise.

On the other hand, she could have easily contacted the ministry and he could be walking right into a trap as well.

He figured they were both aware of these concessions.

“No one can see here. You should transform so we can talk. You have some stuff to explain,” she said. Her voice was quiet but it shook with perhaps fear, and definitely resolve. He did as she said and she took in a sharp breath, he remembered he was a less pretty site as a human than he was as a dog at the moment.

“Dora,” he breathed.

“Don’t. No. None of those familiarities. I do not know who you are now and you definitely do not know me.”

“Are you married?”

“Again not appropriate. So Peter’s alive, what does that mean? Did you murder James and Lily?”

“ _Of course not,_ Edie, I promise on everything that we had. I am innocent.”

She didn’t reply.

“Edora.”

“SIRIUS. We were about to get married. I lived with you. I loved you. I loved a man who a day after we decided to elope was arrested for betraying his best friends and murdering a street full of innocent people. I was interrogated by aurors and ministry officials and unspeakables _for weeks_ afterwards. There was no time to mourn what I lost while I was being poked and prodded and questioned. Being asked again and again and again _how could you not have known?_ And I didn’t have an answer! Here I was, living with a man, I had thought was, sure, rather intense, but funny and smart and _good._ But he was able to keep the fact that he was a _Death Eater_ from his fiance? Friends didn’t trust me or believe me. I have never been at a lower, darker place. So no, Sirius. I am not going to just look at a newspaper picture of a rat on a shoulder and say good enough, come on in, let me make you some tea.”

“It was Peter, Edora. I convinced Lily and James to make Peter their secret keeper, because I was certain that the Death Eaters would never suspect him. And then he ratted them out. And shouted at me in a street, cut off his finger, blew up some muggles, turned into a rat, and got away scot free!”

“And if Peter hadn’t betrayed them? Then what? They’d come after you? Come to our home where you lived with _me?_ And if they hadn’t come after you at home but had found you while you were on a job. What was I supposed to do if you had died?”

“No, Dora, I didn’t even think. I just-”

“No, don’t, Sirius. Even if this whole story is true. This does not make it okay. If you had been killed, I would have been just as much lost and heart broken. Your monster hero complex did not make you a good person. It made you _hurt_ me. Again and again and again. With all your stupid suicide missions, it’s like you didn’t care for a second who you wouldn’t be coming home to if you died. It was like you were so concerned about the world’s future, never about your own. Never about ours. I loved you too much at the time to say anything. I mean there was my Sirius, king of the war effort, who’d do anything to keep his world safe. But I am not the same person I was then and I stopped being love sick a long time ago.”

Sirius looked at the woman in front of him and reassessed. He had thought earlier that she didn’t look very different, but now he was sitting so near her. Her hair was shorter. The bags under her eyes were darker and the hands he had searched for a ring on were shaking, and he realized it had been shaking since even before she had spotted him.

“What did you expect me to say when you told me, Sirius? Let’s just pick right up where we left on? I never stopped loving you?”

“Of course not, Edora. I am fully aware you’ve grown up. But I _haven’t_. I’ve done nothing for the past twelve years except for relive the darkest moments of my life over and over and over again. Thinking about how even though I _didn’t_ do it, it was still my fault James and Lily died. Thinking about how the woman I loved didn’t know. I’ve been stuck on pause for twelve years, Edora, _twelve years_ ,” he sighed, “I came here to tell you what happened, you deserved to know what really happened. That’s all. And, well, selfishly, I wanted you to know. And I needed to know you were doing okay.”

Her hard gaze softened, “I have been. I wasn’t for a long time and there are some dark, dark moments for me still. But I’ve been okay. My sister comes over a lot and I have the most perfect nieces in the world. I work in the apothecary and I get to work on experimental potions.” She grinned wryly, “Allister and I dated for awhile.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes, “oh, I knew he wanted you! I told you!!” 

“We had a nice time, but ultimately,” she smiled wistfully, “like I said back when we were dating when you would get all jealous, he’s a nice boy but that’s about it. Although, when Allister and I did date, I really just needed some nice.”

“But you’ve never---?”

“Married? No. I don’t think I’ve been very good at trusting people. There were several people I loved after you, but I don’t think marriage is for me. Forever started to seem a lot longer after you were sent to Azkaban.”

Sirius nodded.

“Wait, how’d you escape?”

“Slipped through the bars as Padfoot.”

Her crooked grin returned, “let’s hope that none of the real criminals in Azkaban are unregistered animagi.”

He thought about how much he had loved her. The overwhelming feeling of love he’d get every morning when he turned over and there she was, sharing a bed. The feeling of relief he’d get when she would make it home every day safe. She had been so sweet with Harry, he would like to see her play with her nieces.

He wondered, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, what she would have been like as a mother and what he would have been like as a father. When they had been together, they weren’t sure they had wanted kids, certainly not until the world was safer, and maybe not even then. Now he thinks he would have liked one, if things had been different. He wondered what it would have been like to have been in love after the war had ended; if James and Lily had made it; if their plans had gone the way they had always hoped. Unfortunately, that future was not for him, the only future that had ever really could have mattered.

“What’s your plan?” She asked, shaking him out of his revery.

“I’m going to find Peter, and I’m going to kill him.”

She nodded, “and after that?”

“I don’t know if the after matters that much.”

“Sirius, I’ve been living the after for twelve years. It matters the most.”

Not without you, he thought idly. Out loud he said, “I still love you.”

“I know, Sirius, and I still care so so deeply for you, but I can never let myself love you the way I did then. And while I have no doubt that you genuinely love a version of me, you love someone I used to be. Not the me I am now. But Sirius, promise me, you’ll think about the future. It matters, Sirius. It can matter to you again. You have one now,” she slipped a hand through the shield charm and he took it.

Her hands weren’t as soft as they were twelve years ago.

_Edora_

Edora had only ever cried three times for Sirius after he had been taken to Azkaban.

At first, she didn’t believe it. She had _known_ Sirius, had loved him. He didn’t betray Lily and James. He did not kill Peter. He just didn’t.

But then came the evidence. Remus had said he had known that someone was betraying them and had suspected Sirius for awhile. But even then she doubted it. These were trying times. Suspicions were high no matter how much you loved someone.

Then Dumbledore came forward and claimed he had known Sirius was their secret keeper.

So then came the anger. It was an anger she didn’t even know she was a capable of. She was mad in every single bone in her body, every nerve literally on fire with rage.

This man who she had trusted with every ounce of her being, every fiber, was not only a liar, but a Death Eater, a murderer.

She had given him more of herself, more of her love than she had really felt possible. They had loved during a war, they had lost friends and family, but had always had one another.

He had been there when she got word that her brother, a squib, had been killed in his home. He had sworn to help find the people who had done it and kill them. He had promised. She watched him cry when Regulus joined the Death Eaters.

Was all of that an act? Had he always been evil? _How could she not have known?_

And then when she couldn’t be angry anymore, she just felt drained. She felt like she had been running her whole life and only just now was allowed to collapse. She laid in bed, drifting in and out of a restless sleep for days.

It wasn’t until she went home for the first time that she had cried. For a month after, she stayed at Poppy’s. She couldn’t be at her own flat, with his things still strewn around the rooms. She was vaguely aware that aurors had searched the space, but they had left most of his belongings behind.

She didn’t want to see his Puddlemere poster or his robes or his Muggle vinyl collection. But eventually Poppy made her, reminding Edora that it needed to get cleaned out so she could sell it and it might help her mourn.

She didn’t cry when she saw his half empty mug of tea. She didn’t cry in the kitchen when she saw the dead flowers in a vase. The dumb flowers he had given her when he had asked her if she wanted to elope the next week. Those dumb flowers she had laughed at for being ugly while she cried and kissed him and said yes.

She looked at the picture of them that he kept on the wall next to their shared bed. They were laughing and looking at each other with such _undeniable_ love. That man she had loved so resolutely was not the man who had betrayed Lily and James, who had killed Peter. She didn’t know that man.

She wept for the first time when she realized she had never known Sirius Black.

The second time she had cried had been for Sirius not because of him. She watched him transform into that big black dog and bound away towards the fence lining her backyard.

She turned around and walked into the kitchen to make tea. The newspaper still sitting out on the table with the image of Peter Pettigrew perched on the shoulder of a thirteen year old boy.

She had only ever seen Sirius look even remotely close to that sad, that broken when he would mention his mother back when they had been at school. She had seen an angry Sirius multiple times, but never a tormented one.

But this was not a Sirius she recognized. She had come to terms with the Sirius Black who had killed her friends. That had been a powerful pain, but it had been twelve years ago and Sirius hadn’t been who she thought he was and that was that.

But this Sirius, this _broken, tormented_ Sirius-- this Sirius was new ground. She hadn’t fully let herself feel the full scope of what she had just discovered meant. She had turned him away quickly and swiftly. She had spent too much of her life mourning and grieving Sirius Black. She had finally heard Sirius say all the things she had spent so many nights hoping he’d say, but knowing that letting herself hope was a dangerous game.

And there he was, defending himself. _In the flesh_. Her Sirius. Or a man that was maybe, almost her Sirius.

_“I’ve been stuck on pause for twelve years, Edora.”_

Sirius had experienced nothing good, nothing positive since they had decided to elope twelve years ago. Twelve years completely bereft of joy.

She knew she had to say the things she said to him. Edora was not the carefree, snarky girl he had once loved. He did not, and would not love the woman she was now. She was anxious and moody and depressed. She was serious and passive, only fighting a select few battles. And while Sirius was in a darker place now too, she knew they would not lift each other up, but instead wallow in each other’s darknesses. They would forever stay stuck in the “what could have beens.”

Edora had spent so much of the last twelve years angry about what Sirius had taken from her. She had no idea how much more had been taken from him.

_“I still love you.”_

“I love you too, Sirius.”

And then she wept.

The third time was when his name was officially cleared. The Daily Prophet was not a happy one that day. Voldemort returned, Sirius Black dead, and all charges cleared posthumously.

It did not take any time for Edora to begin sobbing that time. It was instantaneous. She had never had to face the threat of war without Sirius.

And Sirius was _innocent_. Any traces of doubt of that were washed away and there was nothing she could do about it.

She wept because Sirius was finally given the possibility of a future and he was dead. Whatever plan he had promised her he would find when his name was cleared would never come to fruition.

She sobbed because Sirius’s life had actually ended fifteen years ago and she was never really given the opportunity to mourn him as he was.

She had mourned a liar, she had mourned a future they couldn’t have together, and now she was mourning Sirius. Her Sirius.

The one she had loved when she was happy and young and hopeful, when snark was the only defense she really needed. When the war had pressed in on them, but they had stood resolutely together.

She wished she had held him when he had been at her house those few years ago. Given him the proper goodbye they hadn’t gotten when they were in love.

_Sirius and Edora_

Edora was a bit surprised and confused when Remus Lupin asked her to Hogsmeade. She liked Remus well enough and they got on well, but he and she hadn’t interacted a whole lot. She spoke to his roommates Sirius and James much more often. She agreed on the provisions that they would just be going as friends, just as she had with Allister Davies a few weeks earlier. Both Allister and Remus were nice enough blokes, but her eyes were very much elsewhere.

Her eyes were actually several feet behind her, trailing behind Remus and herself on their walk to the village. She didn’t know why Peter, James, and Sirius didn’t just join up with her and Remus. She got on quite well with all the Marauders.

She was a bit more troubled about Remus asking her to Hogsmeade than she had been when Allister Davies had asked her. If Remus had feelings for her, it could get in the way of the one boy she had ever really held a candle for.

Of course, she wasn’t the only girl in school who fancied the pants off of Sirius Black, but she felt that her reasons were more legitimate. She didn’t just like him because he was handsome and charming (although those qualities definitely didn’t hurt.) She liked him because he was very witty and a bit sarcastic. She liked a good dry wit on anybody. They also just got on really well. She often wondered if the feeling was mutual, like when he would come into the library (a surprising action from Sirius in and of itself) and sit with her quietly as she read or studied. Or when she would catch him looking over at her from down the Gryffindor table and he would quickly look away. But here she was on a sort of date with one of his best mates.

“So…” She started turning towards Remus, who had been mysteriously quiet the whole walk and had kept looking back and giving the boys furtive glances, “why don’t we just join the group? If we’re going just as friends, we might as well be a big group.”

Remus looked up at her with relief and then looked back, waving at the trio, “we’re headed to the Three Broomsticks care to join us?”

Edora didn’t miss the angry look James shot Remus and Remus’s helpless shrug. She put her guard up. She was not about to be the victim of one of the Marauder pranks.

“You look nice today, Edora,” James said with a smile, “don’t you think so, Remus?”

James sped up to be a foot or two ahead and began walking backwards so he could face the group. Edora was situated between Remus and Sirius. Sirius was looking at the ground with a scowl cemented on his face.

“Yeah, she looks great. It’s really nice getting to spend the day with you,” Remus said slipping an arm over her shoulders.

“Yeah, it’s been swell,” she said in not her kindest tone and shook off his arm. She had said very explicitly that they would be hanging out today _as friends_. And it was starting to seem like a scheme to get her to change her mind. Edora did not take kindly to people who did not take no for an answer, especially when it came to love and relationships. And she didn’t like the sinking feeling she was getting in her stomach as she realized that if Sirius was a part of this plot to set Remus and her up, he likely didn’t have any feelings for her at all.

“Since when have you two gotten all chummy? I didn’t know you really hung out,” Sirius spat, still scowling at his boots. What was going on?

“Oh Edora and Remus have always been close,” James said and Edora looked blankly ahead. They have? “He’s always really admired her wit and pretty hair.”

“All my closest friendships are based on whether or not they admire the beauty of my hair,” Edora said shooting James a death glare, halting, and crossing her arms, “alright boys, you’ve been sprung, something’s up. Time to spill.”

James and Remus exchanged worried glances, “nothing’s up. Remus has just recently realized how smart and pretty and cool you are and wanted to capitalize on those feelings and get a chance to really get to know you _before we graduate._ He realized he was running out of time to say how he feels.”

“Right, that,” Remus said, shrugging.

“Well, I distinctly remember telling Remus that I’d only go with him as _friends,_ ” Edora said, seriously. She was starting to get angry and was ready to turn around and head back to Hogwarts, “I don’t like being treated like I don’t know my own feelings.”

Edora shot a look at Sirius, attempting to gauge where he was situated in this standoff. He was looking shrewdly at his friends, as if he was piecing something together and they were staring back at him. James eyebrows were raised challengingly and Remus just looked apologetic, head going back and forth between Edora and Sirius. Sirius ran a hand threw his hair and shook his head, looking for all the world like he didn’t know why he put up with James Potter.

“Edora, want to ditch these gits and go to Hogsmeade without them?” Sirius asked and James and Remus grinned and high-fived. Peter stood off to the side looking completely perplexed, clearly not a part of the scheme.

Edora grinned. Merlin, these boys were dumb, but Sirius did look particularly good today, “sure?”

“Splendid! Moony, Prongs, Wormtail,” Sirius said nodding at each and grabbing Edora’s hand and hastily pulling her away from the group, “I’ve got a date with the coolest girl at Hogwarts.”

“Actually, I’m on a date with Remus,” Edora said but didn’t let go of his hand. She grinned at him wryly and her heart sped up.

They made their way to the Three Broomsticks and found themselves a booth in the corner. They ordered butterbeers and sat closely together. They had held hands on the way to Hogsmeade but had stopped when Sirius had help open the door for her and suddenly Edora was overcome with something that resembled nerves. She _had_ agreed to go to Hogsmeade with his friend today. And James and Remus had clearly been up to something and she still wasn’t sure exactly what and where Sirius’s change in mood had come from. Her bravado was slipping away quickly. Now in the crowded shop, sitting shoulder to shoulder to the funniest, coolest guy she’d ever known, she didn’t feel quite as confident.

Sirius was looking a bit anxious too, staring at her like he couldn’t really believe she was with him, “listen, I feel like we should clear some stuff up real fast, before I get ahead of myself. This thing with Remus, I think he only asked you out to get to me, because well, I’ve liked you for quite some time. I’m sorry he was a bit pushy about the whole thing, I’m more than happy to sort the git out.”

She laughed, hope pooling in her belly, “that’s a relief actually. I have my eyes on someone else.”

“Allister Davies?” Sirius asked with a wink.

Edora shook her head and looked up at him, “noooope.” She elongated the O and popped the P. Her heart was beating fast against her chest, “it’s weird but I actually like this git who completely interrupted my date this morning. I don’t know, totally swept me off my feet.”

Sirius kissed her and she kissed him back and it was short and sweet and perfect. She thought about what James had said, about Remus wanting to get in there before they graduated. Like graduation was some big end date, but Edora, despite the steely exterior, was a bit of a romantic. She knew that graduation didn’t have to be some grand end date. School would end, but they wouldn’t have to. She figured she and Sirius could have a pretty incredible future together.


End file.
